By Frazier Moore
The Associated Press

News from the Mideast and Washington last week was especially dismaying.

And then, on a much different track, was the bulletin last Thursday datelined SPLITSVILLE: Jesse and Jessica were through.

Years from now, we'll all remember where we were when we found out: New York Giants quarterback Jesse Palmer and Jessica Bowlin, the soul mate he had chosen on The Bachelor, had called it quits.

Who saw that coming!

Almost a whole month ago, we had seen Palmer select Bowlin, a 22-year-old California law student, over the other blond finalist, Tara something. Choosing Jessica was a decision Jesse had reached only after an exhaustive courtship of 25 would-be Ms. Rights on the ABC romantic-reality series. But at the end, proclaimed Palmer, it had hit him "like a ton of bricks."

Now this bombshell!

To make matters worse, the story broke not on ABC's own World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, but on the syndicated TV entertainment show Extra.

How could ABC News, which had followed Palmer's odyssey on Good Morning America, get scooped when his "incredible romantic journey" took this dire turn?

Granted, the folks at ABC News had their hands full with other breaking news. There were also scheduled programs to prepare.

And there's also the ABC News series Weddings Gone Wacky, Wonderful And Wild: Anything For Love, which premiered last week for five Monday airings.

This series surely struck many viewers as embarrassingly silly, the sort of fluff we might more readily have expected from a news source like, well, Extra.

Still, Extra doesn't have what ABC News has: a heavyweight news anchor with years of news cred like Diane Sawyer, backed by respected correspondents Cynthia McFadden, Deborah Roberts and Elizabeth Vargas.

What were they doing on Weddings?! On its premiere, Sawyer tried to explain, "Some of us at ABC News are taking a kind of holiday from our usual reporting."

Taking leave of their journalistic senses is more like it.

Or maybe not. Maybe we viewers should finally get over our fusty ideals for what merits attention by a major newsgathering organization. Let's get real. TV news can be justified as anything a TV news operation wants to put on the air with its name attached.

And if what's treated as news also touts an entertainment show airing on the network, that's really good news.

CBS News, where Edward R. Murrow once pioneered courageous broadcast journalism, has more recently made hay covering made-for-TV news like its own network's Survivor, unconcerned that every "breaking development" was taped months before its release to the public. No matter. News isn't news until somebody sees it.

Meanwhile, NBC News is building on its journalistic heritage with hours of coverage of such NBC shows as The Apprentice and the finales of Friends and Frasier.

But even for a serious correspondent on a serious newsmagazine, salesmanship is part of the game.

CBS News' Dan Rather was busy last week granting interviews to print and broadcast (including CBS News' Early Show as well as Extra) to promote Bill Clinton's appearance on 60 Minutes Sunday.

As one of the chosen to get an early look at My Life, Rather had agreed not to report what he had read. He wasn't likely to scoop himself by giving away the best stuff from his interview before it aired.

Viewers, therefore, would just have to wait. But is that really news?